What did you think your life would be like as an adult when you were in high school? Did you have specific plans? Is your life filled with things you never could have predicted?
I remember an exercise in high school that instructed us to write out a timeline of goals for our lives, how we saw them unfolding. Schooling, marriage, kids. All the things we think will play out in our lives. I can’t say I followed that timeline of expectations very well, both by choice and by circumstance. All the best planning could not have predicted where I have ended up. Do you know the feeling?
I’ve been trying to learn to let go of planning and to just receive instead. (Yes, I know some of you are laughing – I’ll wait until you’re done).
One great way to do that has been learning about contemplative photography, whose principle is to not “take” shots, but rather to receive an image. Three times recently I have received an image but only in looking at the photo did I really see the whole picture.
I decided to avoid the highway and take the back roads to run errands one day. The greens and blues and peace of the little lake (which I’ve driven past for 20 years) made me stop and back up so I could photograph it. I posted it to Facebook with the caption, “I took the road less traveled.”
Somehow, I missed the fact that I included the side mirror in the image. I was kind of bummed about that because I really only wanted to see the lake. Then a neighbor commented, “I can see your past” and I really looked at the image captured in the mirror. That image was, in fact, my past – the road I had just taken, a road very much “less traveled.” A past that lead me to the beauty I was currently enjoying. That reflection in the mirror actually became my favorite part of the picture.
